Game of Thrones actor Owen Teale has said shooting in a Northern Irish quarry in the rain helps him find the darkness in his character.

The Welsh actor, who plays villain Ser Alliser Thorne in the HBO fantasy TV series, told the Radio Times the grim weather in Co Antrim's Magheramorne quarry was miserable but helped him get into character.

The actor, 54, said: "Castle Black is a permanent set filmed in this disused quarry not far from Belfast. And it rains and rains.

"Once you're in the quarry you can't get to your comforts as an actor - to the caravans, to the food wagon; and they just keep you in there.

"When it rains it takes two people to put that enormous cloak on me and once it gets wet it probably weighs my own weight again, which is about 15 stone.

"So it's a bleak, horrible situation, often with me standing up to my ankles in water. But I think it helps. This is what Ser Alliser thinks the world is like."

He also revealed that people approach him on trains and beg him to abuse them in the style of his Game of Thrones character.

But he said fans still warm to his alter ego.

"People love the character," he said.

"They come up to me on the Tube and ask me to abuse them: 'Could you call me a 'bah-sted', I want to record it? Say it with real contempt'."

Teale said fans appreciate Ser Alliser is not just a panto villain.

He said: "He doesn't sit around cooking up evil plans. He thinks he knows what is right. His is a cynical, joyless version of the world - we are made from bad stuff."

Game Of Thrones has been a huge success critically and commercially, but Teale admitted he was not certain it would do so well.

"I didn't believe it would work in the beginning, anyway - I thought it was too unwieldy, too close on the heels of the Tolkien trilogy. But look how wrong I was," he said.